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March 2018

As an update to our previous story, “LaSalle Guards Beat, Pepper Sprayed African Asylum Seekers,” The Intercept reported on the grave abuses suffered by 30 Somali refugees through the story of one of the survivors, Guled Muhumed, this month. Muhumed had spent six months in ICE custody in eleven different facilities. He arrived to the West Texas Detention Facility, operated by LaSalle Corrections, on February 23.

The article described his arrival: “For Muhumed and the others, the apparent threat they posed in the eyes of detention center officials translated to being housed in moldy cells, cut off from other detainees, where the heavy smell of pepper spray lingered. ‘We didn’t go outside until maybe, like, five days into our stay,’ Muhumed said. ‘I started noticing everyone else was getting sick.”’

Muhumed was deported back to Somalia on early Thursday morning, March 29. He and the other thirty men spoke out prior to their deportation. “Their testimonials were compiled in a 23-page report that painted a profoundly disturbing picture of ICE contractors drunk on power. All of the men reported having been pepper-sprayed during their week in detention, and nearly half described physical abuse. One of the men claimed the warden of the facility punched him in the face repeatedly while he was in the nurse’s office. Another said guards repeatedly fondled his penis while he was pushed up against a wall.”

Following the incident, the San Antonio Express-News Editorial Board wrote an editorial on March 28, “Brutal conditions must be investigated.” Critiquing the private prison industry, the editorial team wrote:

“Running prisons — or immigrant centers — for private profit will, in our view, inevitably lead to cutting corners and unfair treatment. If these allegations are proven true, the decision to continue prisons for profit should be re-examined and the private contract in Sierra Blanca canceled. In fact, private prisons warrant examination even if the allegations aren’t borne out.”

Following a four month campaign and mounting community pressure, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) released Laura Monterrosa from T. Don Hutto Detention Center on Friday, March 16.

This victory came after Monterrosa reported sexual assault by a CoreCivic (formerly CCA, or Corrections Corporation of America) guard in November. While ICE and the Williamson County Sheriff’s Office claimed to investigate her case and find no substantiation, the FBI opened an investigation in December. In the months that followed, Monterrosa faced increasing retaliation within the center, including 60 hours of solitary confinement under threat of indefinite isolation unless she recanted her testimony.

Monterrosa then sued ICE for her release on the grounds that she had not been provided adequate medical care, including psychological evaluation or treatment. The parties settled for her to receive outpatient therapy once per week.

Congressional representatives also acted to bring attention to the issue of sexual assault in Texas detention facilities. As the Austin American-Statesman reported, “U.S. Reps. Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin, and Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio, wrote to immigration officials last month asking them to ‘direct an investigation of ICE’s handling of sexual assault cases in Texas immigration detention facilities.’” The letter mentioning Monterrosa’s case was signed by 44 congressional representatives. In the final days of the campaign, the community called on Beto O’Rourke to intervene in the case and made a direct call to Daniel Bible, San Antonio Field Director for ICE. O’Rourke said in his interview with the Texas Observer, “For me the really amazing thing is all these people in Texas, really different parts of the state … this network of people who came together to make sure she was OK.”

As the Texas Observer reported, Laura’s case showed that it is possible to win under the Trump administration. “A lot of people have stopped organizing because they don’t think it’s possible now,” Claudia Muñoz, immigration programs director at Grassroots Leadership, said. “But you have to be willing to try; it might not work, but people are being deported either way.”

Laura received deferred action and continues to advocate for the women detained in Hutto. “Now that we can claim this victory, we can achieve more because this is not just about me, there are 500 women inside suffering right now. We should keep fighting for them and their liberation. With the help of all of you, we can achieve this and much more. I know that everyone together, we can achieve a great triumph,” she said at a press conference on March 26.

In a shocking report, advocates exposed that 80 African detainees were subjected to physical and psychological torture by guards employed by private prison company LaSalle Corrections at the West Texas Detention Facility in Sierra Blanca. The San Antonio Express-News reported that the evidence for the report came from interviews with 30 men from Somalia who are now being held in Coastal Bend Detention Center in Robstown. The men reported that the guards pepper sprayed, beat, and shouted racial slurs at the men. One man reported being groped by a guard.

“The report also says the men were held at gunpoint and threatened with solitary confinement; one man said an official at the facility told him, ‘Shut your black ass up,’ and others said officials called them ‘monkeys’ and the N word,” the article stated.

The organizations Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES), the Texas A&M School of Law Immigrant Rights Clinic, and the UT School of Law Immigration Clinic have filed complaints with the U.S. Attorney’s office, the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, and the Office of the Inspector General. The coalition, including UndocuBlack, the Detained Migrant Solidarity Committee, and Committee on American-Islamic Relations San Antonio, have launched a petition to stop the deportations of the Sierra Blanca survivors.

In his article in the Washington Post from May2017, Martín Méndez Pineda detailed the “hell” of living in West Texas Detention Facility, “There, I experienced the worst days of my life.” This facility was exposed in a Human Rights First report to hold asylum seekers for prolonged periods, particularly under the Trump administration.

The Texas Tribune reported that two immigrants detained at Rio Grande Detention Center suffered bat bites earlier this month. The private immigrant prison, operated by GEO Group, At least one person was undergoing treatment in case the bat could infect with rabies. Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed the bites while it stated the facility was undergoing a “thorough inspection and abatement plan.”

“One bite occurred at around 1 a.m. Sunday at the Rio Grande Detention Center in Webb County, according to San Antonio-based immigration attorney Laura Figueroa. Her client, Yonathan Eduardo Morales Galviz, was taken to the hospital at about 3:30 a.m. that day and then taken back to the facility soon after,” the article stated.

In an article by San Antonio Express-News, Figueroa commented that her client has been moved to a different dormitory that also has bats. She said, “You have guards that were telling detainees, ‘Oh, we know about this bat problem. Just kill them and we'll open the back door so you can dispose of the bats.’”

This month, San Antonio Express-News covered the story of Sadat Ibrahim, a gay asylum seeker from Ghana, who has filed a lawsuit with several other immigrants against Immigration and Customs Enforcement for holding asylum seekers in “onerous conditions” to deter them from pursuing their claims.

The lawsuit states that the government is subjecting immigrants “to such prolonged and harsh detention conditions that they will eventually, in despair, relinquish their petitions and return to their dangerous homelands.” Ibrahim has been detained for over two years, has been repeatedly transferred, and currently is detained in South Texas Detention Center operated by GEO Group. Ibrahim’s case shows that it is extraordinarily difficult to obtain the evidence and legal representation needed to win asylum while detained. In his case, the detention center also withheld the evidence of a CD containing a video of anti-gay gangs attacking his partner.

The article further details the terms of the lawsuit: “In their lawsuit, Ibrahim and three other asylum-seekers held in South Texas — a man from Honduras, who’d been in detention in Port Isabel since April after requesting asylum because his two brothers were killed, agreed to return home and was dropped from the case in January — allege that their continued detention violates their right to due process. None of them is a flight risk or danger to the community, the lawsuit argues, yet they’ve been in detention for a year or more. Lawyers representing them included in court filings affidavits by doctors who said the immigrants are suffering physical and psychological maladies because of their extended detention.”

Ibrahim has faced retaliation within the center for actions by advocacy groups to pressure for his release, as he was placed in isolation. Our original story about Sadat Ibrahim from September 2017 details more background on his case.

The bribery cases against State Senator Carlos Uresti and former Reeves County Judge Jimmy Galindo continue in their profiting from Reeves County Detention Complex. KSAT reported developments this month that Uresti was scheduled alongside businessman Vernon Farthing to be tried in May. As of March 19, according to San Antonio Express News, Uresti’s trial has been delayed until October.

Since we first reported in May 2017, Galindo pleaded guilty to charges of bribery, according to KSAT. Galindo was the Reeves County Judge until December 31, 2016. Galindo led Reeves County to submit a proposal to the Bureau of Prisoners to win the contract in 2006 to house federal prisoners including immigrants. The Reeves County Detention Complex, located in Pecos, Texas, now houses 1,356 prisoners in its R-3 facility under the Criminal Alien Requirement.

The lawsuit outlines that in August 2006, Galindo, Uresti, and Farthing secured the medical contract for Farthing’s company, Physicians Network Association (PNA), hiring Uresti as a “consultant.” In September 2006, Galindo signed the contract on behalf of Reeves County to PNA. From September 2006 to September 2016, PNA and its successor companies paid Uresti approximately $10,000 per month. Uresti awarded approximately half of the bribe money to Galindo.

While Uresti and Galindo await trial, Reeves County’s prisons remain historically known for their shocking abuses, including the overuse of solitary confinement and overcrowded prisons. Prior to closing its R1 and R2 facilities, it was ranked among America’s 10 Worst Prisons by Mother Jones.